Steven Fales is an actor/writer/producer best known for his solo play "Confessions of a Mormon Boy" which is now Part One in "Mormon Boy Trilogy." Steven is also a public speaker and creativity coach. www.facebook.com/fales.steven or fales.steven@gmail.com

Steven Fales

Steven Fales -- Actor/Writer/Producer

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Cashing In on 'Book of Mormon' Stories

Adapted from a recent book proposal.

I feel I’ve lived several Latter-day
lifetimes. (“Fales has lived an almost Dickensian life.”—Chicago Sun-Times.) It
just so happens that I’m writing about my experiences at the height of “The
Mormon Moment,” a moment that is only on pause since Mormon Gov. Mitt Romney
recently lost the 2012 presidential election, but will surely resurge when gay
friendlier Mormon Gov. Jon Huntsman (hopefully)
returns to the freshly blazed campaign trail and more and more Mormons enter
the mainstream.Mitt lost, but the
Mormon monolith won! No matter what controversy comes along, Latter-day Saints
always seem to come out on top. Mitt learned to “flip-flop” from them. Maybe I
learned to weather storms and “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”
from them, too! (I just wish I was heir to the Huntsman family estate. You
think Mitt was rich!)

As Mormonism comes of age and
outgrows its cult label and as Mormons lose their minority status—they’ve also
begun to lose their anonymity. Anonymity afforded them protection in the past.
Partially self-inflicted, their “anonymous” chapel and temple doors have been
flung wide open forever. It’s disconcerting to me, however, to see how many
outsiders are now cashing in on Mormon Americana plundering its newfound
vulnerability and eccentricity. Mormons, Inc. has become quite the cottage
industry and increasingly commercially viable. Who then should get a piece of
the Mormon American Apple Pie?

With church membership globally
warming to over 14,000,000 members and Mormonism flooding the earth, more discerning people than ever want
to know who their Mormon neighbors really are—especially on the East Coast.
It’s time for insiders to explain with honesty, fairness, and without
lampooning. (Though it is irresistibly delicious to poke fun when they set themselves
up for ridicule.) Too often I’ve seen complex Mormons indiscriminately written
as two-dimensional characters and the rich sub-culture trivialized—an exotic
American curiosity to be exploited and dismissed once the writer’s assignment
is finished, agenda completed, play promoted and awards won. In a world of
fleeting loyalty (if any) or visceral knowledgeof the subject (even less) , I offer authentic, nuanced answers and
distinctions to questions most journalists don’t even know how to ask just by
telling my story truthfully.

Turning them into Mormon Muppets,
today’s “Mopportunists” not only miss the heart and soul of the Mormon
experience, but show disrespect when they misquote, take doctrine out of
context, ignore details, miss historical facts and in-humor, mangle terminology
and lexicon—especially when projects reach the stage or screen and they butcher
syntax and egregiously mispronounce Mormon monikers! Not all are qualified to
tell the Mormon story nor should they.
In a world of carpetbaggers and gold diggers, I claim Mormon “authority”
because I’ve lived it, care about it, was burned at the stake by it, and will
continue to stand behind it. In fact I’m so excited I’ve done my homework I
just want to start swearing about it! Flip-it-y-flip-in’-flip!

Heck, it’s a brave new post-Romney
world! I hope to add another crack to the Mormon marble ceiling—and humanize
Mormondom for the better. Called “such a perceptive writer” (New York Daily
News), my writing is “wrenchingly honest” (Los Angeles Times) but I offer it
with “an astonishing generosity of spirit” (Boston Globe). The Chicago
Tribune’s Chris Jones assures, “Fales does not do a hatchet job on the
Christian Right in general or on the LDS Church in particular.” I’ve
experienced that gosh darn institutionalized bigotry of the doggone Mormon
Church first hand! But in a bitter, angry world of two-fisted bullies slinging mud
and blame, I still find myself whispering, “The fault, dear readers, is not in
the Mormons but in ourselves that we are underlings.”

This memoir is my contribution to
building bridges—an olive branch. As I say in one of my shows, I don’t have a
problem with organized religion. It’s distorted religion that’s the problem. As
an unofficial black sheep bard indigenous to the Mormon fold, I strive to bring
healing and transformation to my tribe and more understanding to an inquisitive
(yet still hostile) non-Mormon world. My work is a non-traditional prayer. Mormon Boy is my sometimes searing,
often funny, always true-of-heart valentine.

It’s my experience that the specificity
with which I write about Mormonism (and other themes in this book) helps the
narrative land universally. It translates well to any religious culture. All
are welcome at this Mormon banquet! As I pull back the curtain of my particular
religious family’s dining room, non-denominational readers will imagine for
themselves what it’s like to break bread with even more high profile “perfect”
royal Mormon families than mine and vicariously witness how the “spiritual
elite” wrangle with their Mormon white trash quandaries.

Regardless of economic or religious
status all families are created dysfunctionally equal. As I will illuminate
later, the disease of addiction and mental illness is no respecter of persons
or cultures (though Mormons like to argue that they are immune!). Keeping the
narrative close to the culture’s emphasis on the family there is no better way
to understand Mormonism than through its microcosm. I will take you inside
mine. As the Mormon scripture goes, “Here am I. Send me!”

My proud (cult-susceptible, mostly Anglo) immigrant ancestors crossed the Plains by
covered wagon and settled what they considered the Promised Land. Born in
Provo, Utah at the height of Mormonism’s Golden Age (1970s) I achieved all the
Mormon male milestones with flying colors. I have the Mormon worldview down
pat! At my Mormon best (before my fall from grace through formal
excommunication) you couldn’t chip my Latter-day paint.

Mormondom has blessed me with many
gifts—and at the same time it has slapped me in the face over and over again. I
am a sixth-generation Mormon anomaly. As a survivor, I still personify and
exemplify the attributes and liabilities of my people and bear the blessings
and burdens of proof. A born people pleaser, I can defend, apologize or soothe
with effusive compliments; a born provocateur, I can blast, antagonize and
lacerate with damning criticism. I can turn on a scathing, witty Mormon dime.
In spite of my scars I like to say that I may no longer be a Latter-day Saint
but something about me will always be Mormon.

I don’t think I need to go into
great detail about the popularity of Mormon-themed work, art and celebrities
today, but here is a teaser: Jon Krakauer’s national bestselling Under the
Banner of Heaven (Anchor Press 2004); the old bestseller The Mormon Murders;
the mega hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon on Broadway (they stole my
marketing!); Elizabeth Smart’s new memoir (St. Martin’s Press); Donny and Marie
Osmond’s recent comeback from Vegas to Broadway including their bestselling
books (Donny’s Life is Just What You Make It: My Story So Far; Marie’s Behind
the Smile and Might as Well Laugh About it Now); Twilight author Stephanie
Meyer (Mormon vampires?); controversial novelist Orson Scott Card; American
Idol’s David Archuleta: singer Jewel; Ryan Gosling; Katherine Heigl; Amy Adams;
Eliza Dushku; Chelsea Handler; Paul Walker; Aaron Eckhart (who I went to BYU
with); playwright Neil LaBute (who I also went to BYU with); the HBO series Big
Love; Reality TV’s Sister Wives; legendary Gladys Knight (converted!); Julianne Hough of
Dancing With the Stars; Christina Aguilera’s parents; famous 49er quarterback
Steve Young; Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o’s virtual love life; the gay cult film
Latter Days; non-Mormon Tony Kushner’s seminal Angels in America (how dare he
write about gay Mormons like myself!); Dustin Lance Black’s play 8 (not to
mention his acclaimed Oscar acceptance speech that nearly rendered all my work irrelevant
and his bareback sex tape! I have never done that.); the Sundance documentary film one-night sensation 8: The
Mormon Proposition; the PBS documentary The Mormons; the many other books on
Mormondom from Rough Stone Rolling to No Man Knows My History to Mormonism for
Dummies and lots of very dry historical novels, memoirs, and textbooks; Mitt
Romney’s Turnaround (and all the other books about him!); Fringe Mormonism’s
Sunstone Magazine; excommunicated ERA activist Sonja Johnson’s From Housewife
to Heretic (Random House, 1980); Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah)’s latest albums (not
joking!); incendiary and sentimental Glenn Beck’s current and former FOX News
empire; O Magazine writer Martha Beck’s Leaving the Saints (daughter of
legendary Mormon scholar and Egyptologist Hugh Nibley); The Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People’slate Stephen
R. Covey; JetBlue founder David Neeleman; former CEO of Madison Square Garden
Dave Checketts; and the Marriott Hotel empire (take that Paris Hilton!). Even
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is a Mormon! (He sent me a letter when I received my
Eagle Scout Award! Did I mention I was actually raised in Las Vegas? I’ll be
going into that at length!) It’s a Mormon legend that Elvis enthusiastically
received a copy of The Book of Mormon
from the Osmonds! (It didn’t keep him sober).

Deserving a paragraph all her own,
I can sing along with (and see through) the goddess of Mormon Arts and Letters
Carol Lynn Pearson’s many Mormon works and memoirs including her bestselling
Good-bye, I Love You. I happen to be her former son-in-law. It is also
expedient that I mention my former Mormon blushing bride, Emily Pearson’s new
memoir Dancing With Crazy (which I
still haven’t read). Emily is Carol Lynn’s daughter and the mother of my
children. My kids are the heirs to one of first mega hit Mormon musicals, Carol Lynn Pearson’s My Turn On Earth and my international off-Broadway one-man hit, Confessions of a Mormon Boy.

Let’s not forget that Time Magazine’s frequent
cover girl The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has its own
authorized PR campaigns to top the charts from its latest “I Am a Mormon”
commercials in New York taxis to its official international touring ambassador,
the Grammy Award-winning, Carnegie Hall playing,
“longest-continuous-radio-broadcast-in-the-world” reaching Mormon Tabernacle
Choir’s weekly Music and the Spoken Word. (Their iconic Mormon organ is a
monstrosity. Over 11,000 pipes! The new Conference Center is the largest
enclosed religious auditorium in the world seating 23,000!) As I recall the
Church generated a bit of buzz during the 2002 Winter Olympics (or “Molympics”)
in Salt Lake City (I worked for NBC in Park City that month). As it becomes
popular to trace your ancestral lineage to Ellis Island and beyond, the Church
boasts the largest genealogical library in the world. Every newly inaugurated
president gets their family history done for them for free! Love them or hate
them, Mormons are here to stay. (We were the original Scientology and have far
more real estate! I heard we now own Mars.) I could go on but won’t. Except to
say that I still seem to capitalize the “C” in my fond former Church a lot!
Mormon habits die hard.

Once again, I propose that it’s
still rare to find non-fiction Mormon mainstream stories written by insiders
who are not out to proselytize and who are academically, artistically, and
ecclesiastically free to be honest and objective. We must move beyond
sentimental Pollyanna-member-written apologetic propaganda and bitter ex-Mormon
political diatribes. Sometimes it takes a real heretic to get the job done not
merely an intellectual, whining “apostate”.(Heretics have the prerogative to be generous. I am an heretic.) An
insider’s insider but no longer “Peter Priesthood”, it’s still my calling, my
birthright to tell Mormon stories—starting with my own.

I am offering something real, maybe even too
real. “Because everything’s coming up Mormon!” (That’s from my irreverent,
nostalgic “Broadway Mormon Medley.” You’ll never know when a lyric, scripture,
pithy recovery slogan, witticism or silly quip will pop up in my tragicomedy.)
Am I now gilding the Mormon lily? (The seagull lily is Utah’s state flower!
Guess the state bird?) Though I am capable of sending up the Mormon
stereotypes, by the end of this proposal I hope to have deconstructed and
challenged them for the better—re-sculpting Latter-day souls into likeable,
fresh characters while chiseling out an unforgettable, inspiring, classic,
fresh Mormon Gothic narrative.

Finally, as an heir to the Mormon
legacy I declare with a loud, clear subversive pioneer descendant voice that I
am the quintessential oxy-Mormon or as Variety calls me, “Brokeback Mormon.”
Though London’s Boyz Magazine calls me “the gayest Mormon on earth” with Four
Stars! (London Gay Times gave me Five!), I’m ironically the wholesome dad you
may have seen in the “Ski Utah” commercial that recently played all over the
country. “The Greatest Snow on Earth!” I am no mere Manhattan Mormon poser or
South Park imposter! I’m here to make the New York Times declare once more,
“Fales knows how to sell it!” I’ll win over the most cynical The New Yorker
subscriber.

I intend for this book to become
the definitive Mormon (if not American) memoir. Mormonism, however, is just the
compelling context for more important, serious themes—and I’m not just talking
about cliché “Momosexuality”. And, yes, as a real Mormon, I’m working on that
self-righteous arrogance. Let's get down to serious, vulnerable business.

1 comment:

Am here to testify what this great spell caster done for me. i never believe in spell casting, until when i was was tempted to try it. i and my husband have been having a lot of problem living together, he will always not make me happy because he have fallen in love with another lady outside our relationship, i tried my best to make sure that my husband leave this woman but the more i talk to him the more he makes me fell sad, so my marriage is now leading to divorce because he no longer gives me attention. so with all this pain and agony, i decided to contact this spell caster to see if things can work out between me and my husband again. this spell caster who was a woman told me that my husband is really under a great spell that he have been charm by some magic, so she told me that she was going to make all things normal back. she did the spell on my husband and after 5 days my husband changed completely he even apologize with the way he treated me that he was not him self, i really thank this woman her name is Dr Aluta she have bring back my husband back to me i want you all to contact her who are having any problem related to marriage issue and relationship problem she will solve it for you. her email is traditionalspellhospital@gmail.com she is a woman and she is great. wish you good time.He cast spells for different purposes like(1) If you want your ex back.(2) if you always have bad dream(3) You want to be promoted in your office.(4) You want women/men to run after you.(5) If you want a child.(6) You want to be rich.(7) You want to tie your husband/wife to be yours forever.(8) If you need financial assistance.(9) HIV/AIDS CURE(10) is the only answer to that your problem of winning the lottery